


A Working Relationship

by Expecting_the_Inquisition (DeathCorporal)



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Anal Sex, Aroused Victim, Clothed Sex, Dissociation, Double Penetration in One Hole, M/M, Oral Sex, Restraints, Spitroasting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-01-28 21:54:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21399256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathCorporal/pseuds/Expecting_the_Inquisition
Summary: “Well. Perhaps you can express your sorrow by putting your mouth to better use than alerting the public to our complicity in 15,000 people’s deaths.”
Relationships: Reno/Rufus Shinra/Tseng
Comments: 14
Kudos: 67
Collections: Consent Issues Exchange 2019





	A Working Relationship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pt_tucker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pt_tucker/gifts).

It would be a lie to say that things had returned to a relative calm after the shock of the president’s death. The day to day operations of the company had, however, begun to fall back into routine, and most of the employees settled into an uneasy silence: silence on the change in leadership, silence on the rash of resignations, silence on anything that remotely touched on the word “AVALANCHE.” If it wasn’t one’s duty to know about what the executives or the defense department was doing, one did one’s utmost _not_ to know.

For the Department of Administrative Research, however, such concerns were inescapable. Reno had sat through many a high clearance meeting in the wake of the attack, and he knew, with increasing certainty, that the Turks would be leaving the Eastern Continent within a matter of weeks. They needed appropriate intelligence; they needed appropriate leverage; they apparently needed a goddamn military parade on their way out. If the stress was getting to him, he did his best not to show it, but he sensed that something was always on the precipice of going _off_ somehow. Amidst everything else, the fact that he, personally, had collapsed one eighth of the city into a nothing of rubble and corpses seemed to be almost a footnote to the unfolding clusterfuck around them.

He hadn't said much about how he felt to Rude-nothing that he could recall, anyway. They'd gone to a dive in Sector 2, but looking back, the details of that night were fuzzy. They'd had three beers, and another stream of plate footage was blaring on the TV screen, a thin line of red text describing the President’s most recent statement. His fingers had shaken a little as he'd drawn his cigarette to his mouth, and he’d mentioned, in that slurred haze of 1 AM, something or another about his feelings on the matter: something guarded, something ambiguous. Perhaps it was that he hadn’t known how many people would be hit. Perhaps it was the shame that a smaller target hadn’t been selected. 

Whatever it was, Rude had gone silent, and next thing he knew they were in a cab. He’d hadn’t really thought much of it until the morning when he was paged to an unscheduled meeting on Floor 67. Amidst the unnatural, suspended motion of the long elevator ride up, it was thoughts of that evening and that bar that seemed to weigh down his heart and head. Nobody asked you to a meeting on Floor 67 to offer you a goddamn commendation.

He watched the city fly into view down below him, eyes on the wedge of nothingness where there was a gap in the plate. Something sank in the pit of his stomach, and by the time he reached his stop, he knew very thoroughly that he’d fucked up.

Tseng was waiting for him when he got there and didn’t seem terribly amused when Reno greeted him with an over-familiar “Yo boss” and an exaggerated salute. Silently, he led him down the hall, past science and development and towards security. When they arrived at interrogation room 67-21B, he swiped the door open with his card and waved him in.

He thought of bolting. Who the fuck wouldn’t think of bolting? Reno had never been invited to an impromptu meeting in a cell before, and he knew damn well that nothing pleasant was going to occur inside one. He also knew that there was nowhere to run. Security had gotten pretty tight after the shitshow with the Ancient escaping, and the only conceivable escape he had involved sixty-seven stories between him and the pavement.

Resigned, he walked through the door and didn’t flinch when it closed behind him and audibly clicked into a locking position. Everything was much as he expected it would be: metal table bolted to the floor, three uncomfortable-looking chairs, a whining florescent light high above them.

The new president sat in front of him. For the first time Reno had seen him, he almost resembled his father, bearing the spoilt, disinterested look of a man about to do something terrible with complete nonchalance.

Shit.

“Reno,” Rufus said tersely, not looking up as he fidgeted with something on a large, expensive-looking, obviously prototyped PHS. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, sir,” Reno said with a nervous grin. “Just waiting about until we get the go ahead to move out.”

“Oh?” Rufus said, finally meeting his gaze. “How have you been spending your time?”

He exhaled sharply, still smiling, still trying to pretend that he wasn’t intimately aware of how deeply fucked he was.

“I haven’t been doing anything really, yo. Just resting up before we deploy.”

“Have you been doing any resting up at a bar called _Layla’s_?”

Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.

“I think I was there once… maybe?”

The air of the room felt very still as Tseng took a single step forward and placed a hand on each of his arms. Reno flexed as he instinctively thought to grab for his mag-rod. It was only a momentary impulse, however. It was now self-evident that he was an idiot, but he wasn’t a suicidal one.

“So Rude ratted on me then…”

“Your partner has been remarkably discreet,” Rufus said. “Perhaps a little too much so. The blonde who you bought drinks for, however, made some rather pointed calls to what was marketed as an anonymous tip line.”

Reno watched as Tseng dropped one hand to retrieve his weapon and toss it onto the table. He tensed but did not move. He stared at the floor and saw a large, browned crack that ran across the tile. He considered that it would be a very stupid final thing for him to be looking at before he died.

“I barely said anything, yo,” he mumbled, eyes still downcast. “I didn’t think anybody would take it that way.”

Rufus got up and paced over to where Reno stood, placing a hand gently under his chin such that he could tilt he head up to meet his gaze.

“This concerned citizen disagreed.” There was something deeply disconcerting in the flash of his pale blue eyes as he spoke. Reno thought to any number of pieces of unsavory gossip as he tried not look into them too deeply. There had been many a whisper in months long past as to the ways in which President ShinRa’s son had appetites far more unnerving than those of his father.

“I’m sorry,” he said artlessly, stammering a little. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

He didn’t _ actually _ know what he’d meant or even what he’d said, but he knew that he was—in fact—very sorry for whatever it had been. He tried to remain as still and unmoving as he possibly could while a gloved hand caressed his cheek.

"Could you clarify what you did mean by it?"

He was backed into a corner. This was a question he couldn't answer, and even if he could, the fact that his boss was suddenly stroking his face made it pretty damn difficult to focus on crafting a convincing reply. He felt the pulse of his heart thrumming through every inch of his body as he wondered what the fuck this was about to lead up to.

Rufus smiled.

"You know, I think we've asked employees to resign for far less troubling oversights when they _could_ explain their motivations, Reno. You're striking me right now as not a terribly good investment on the part of the company."

Reno knew damn well what "resignation" meant in his case, and looking at Rufus he knew damn well that it wasn't a bluff. He breathed very slowly.

"What can I possibly do to make it clear I'm uh..." His did his best to compose himself. "I'm a good investment, sir?" He had suspicions, but he didn't wish to think too long on them. "As I said, I'm incredibly sorry."

Rufus withdrew his hand. 

“Well. Perhaps you can express your sorrow by putting your mouth to better use than alerting the public to our complicity in 15,000 people’s deaths.”

That number echoed in Reno’s head, and as it became clear what was about to happen, his thoughts were suddenly very far removed from the actual scene unfolding before him. When Rufus undid the fly of his trousers, when Tseng’s grip on his arms tightened, when the President pulled out his cock, thick and erect and ready—all of it seemed a perfectly understandable chain of events. It felt staged, unreal—and there was a different sort of logic to unreality. It was as though he were casually glancing through the previews on some motel’s pay-per-view porn menu. This was too ridiculous to be happening to him—too ridiculous for him to do anything but accept it.

A lot of witty retorts died on his lips as Tseng firmly and insistently pushed him down to his knees, not uttering a word as Rufus approached. Reno bit his lower lip just as the President pressed the tip of his cock against his mouth, and he could feel the slightest dribble of precum wet against his skin. Rufus wrenched a hand into the back of his hair, gripping his pony-tail tight.

He didn’t need to be told what to do when his head was yanked forward. He certainly didn’t need any elaboration as to what would happen if he bit down. He opened his mouth and tried his best to relax his throat as Rufus thrust the whole length of his cock into it. As he gagged a little, he felt what he thought was Tseng stroking his arm ever so slightly with a finger or two—an almost imperceptible gesture that could mean anything from comfort to encouragement to anticipation.

Rufus inhaled sharply and began to pull him back and forth, fucking his throat with almost mechanical brutality as he rocked his hips against him. Reno did his utmost to be… accommodating. There was no possibility here to protest. He had to take the fact he was sucking off his former boss’ sadistic shit of a kid in stride. He pulled his head forward as best he could to match Rufus’ rhythm, his tongue writhing against the underside of his shaft. Reno tried to remain calm, tried to make it good for him, tried his utmost not to think too hard on the fact all of this was happening in the first place. He told himself that the sooner he could get him off, the sooner they could get on with whatever else was about to happen.

“You’re an almost tolerable employee like this,” Rufus said casually, tilting Reno’s head back such that he could look him in the eye. “It’s good to see you having a basic competence for doing something _ silently _.”

Rufus kept going, taking long thrusts in which he quite nearly withdrew himself entirely before jamming himself in to the hilt. After three or four of these, he just held Reno in place a moment, his face pressed uncomfortably against the crisp fabric of his trousers and the blond hair atop his pubic bone. Reno felt like he might choke. His eyes began to water as he struggled, in what little room he had to move, to find some position that would best allow him to breath.

Rufus closed his eyes a moment, his tongue grazing his top lip as he took one deep, measured breath.

He didn’t come. He loosed his hand from Reno’s hair and pushed him away instead, looking at him with a catlike satisfaction as the man gasped desperately after air. Tseng, who had not said a word in any of this, held his colleague steady.

“Let’s see if you’re as tolerable bent over a table,” Rufus said dispassionately. “Prep him.”

He looked in Tseng’s direction and then sat down in the room’s single chair, occasionally stroking himself as he watched the man begin to unbutton Reno’s jacket. 

“Tseng…” Reno began, his voice inflected as though he were about to make some plea. He lapsed into silence as his director continued to undress him, unresponsive to the sound of his name. Tseng laid his rumpled jacket on the far end of the table, folding it with a methodical neatness that seemed ill-suited to anything Reno owned. Sighing, Reno began to undo his shirt, looking at Rufus with a subdued bitterness.

“I can undress myself, you know,” he mumbled.

Tseng paused, as though waiting for confirmation that this was acceptable. Rufus, evidently enjoying the spectacle, gave an approving nod.

Reno kept looking at the crack on the floor as he continued to strip, not meeting Tseng’s gaze as he handed him his shirt, his shoes, his slacks—all one article at a time. It seemed ritualistic, the feeling of eyes upon him as he slowly removed his garments and Tseng set them tidily aside. He wondered if there was anyone watching on some fucking camera somewhere. God knew that the entire building was wired.

“You did a passing good job there, you know,” Rufus said in an almost bored monotone. “Do you have a lot of experience in this vein?”

“It uh… it isn’t something I really put on my resume or anything, sir,” Reno said with a weak laugh.

Once he was fully naked, he gained a new appreciation for how intentionally cold they kept these goddamn rooms, and he flinched as Tseng slowly pressed his thin frame against the metal table. He tried to keep his eyes on Rufus as his hands were drawn behind his back and tethered in place with a cheap set of zip-tie cuffs—the sort of thing you’d use to when rounding up a plaza’s worth of civs before you sorted through for dissidents.

“I’m not going to put up a fight or anything, you know,” he said with quiet resignation.

“I know,” Rufus said, flashing a smile.

His breath hitched a little as he finished speaking, his hand running along his shaft with an obvious intensity. It was abundantly evident where his thoughts were.

Reno—naked, tethered, bent over and humiliated—felt the slick wet sensation of lubricant being applied. He wondered—if he survived this—how the fuck he was ever going to be able to look Tseng in the eye again. He bit his lower lip as his boss slipped one of his fingers slowly inside of him, and let forth a soft groan as he grazed his prostate. He felt disgusting, his own soft erection becoming increasingly apparent as Tseng slowly added another finger. His moans gradually grew less and less constrained as his director—the buttoned-up asshole who’d sat across from him just yesterday with some banal lecture about the dress code and the protocols for file formats—continued to finger him in preparation for another man to fuck him. By the time he’d been at it for a while—when Rufus gestured for him to stop, Reno was rock hard and quite ready to sink beneath the floor in mortification.

Tseng hadn’t spoken at all in any of this, and Reno felt sick as he watched the two men trade places. He had to fucking look at Tseng, standing in front of him with a cool professional detachment, as he felt Rufus move behind him and push the head of his rigid cock firm against his hole. Reno suppressed something a little sharper than a groan as he felt Rufus thrust suddenly inside of him, appreciating from a new perspective just how big the little shit in question actually was.

“Please ah… enjoy yourself, Tseng,” Rufus said, gasping a little. “I’m not interested in hearing him talk at present.”

Tseng unbuttoned his pants. Looking at his face, Reno tried to parse his expression, and felt a little awkward when he tried to look away. It mattered to him, for some reason, even as Rufus ShinRa was beginning to pick up a rhythmic pace of fucking him in the goddamn ass. It mattered that he know the extent to which Tseng was into this.

He tensed as Rufus grabbed at his hips, leveraging him upward a little as he fucked into him. Tseng pulled out his seemingly flaccid cock and began to stroke himself briskly, eyes closed.

“You having trouble getting it up, boss?” Reno said in as biting a tone as he could muster under the circumstances. “I admit I’m not quite the looker your Cetra girl is?”

Tseng managed to cuff him in the face just as Rufus pulled him into a particularly deep thrust. He yelped sharply. As Tseng hooked a thumb into his mouth and pried it open, he felt a hot trickle of blood running from his nose down to his lips.

He didn’t resist as Tseng began facefuck him, not any more than he had with Rufus. He tried to let his jaw, his throat, his entire body slacken as best he could as they used him, spearing him from both ends in a silence punctuated only occasionally by a measured gasp. This was it then; this was where he stood—vice-director of the Turks. He supposed it was a fitting literalization as to how thoroughly the ShinRa hierarchy fucked all of its employees.

His own erection throbbed as Rufus continued to angle into his prostrate, and he felt an aching annoyance at how the zip tie prevented him from touching himself. He hated that his body had reacted like this—hated that he was so desperate to get off even as Tseng, both hands on the back of his head, slammed him down onto his cock—even as Rufus plowed into him with increasing force and abandon. He tried to turn his thoughts elsewhere, tried to think about anything that wasn’t his present predicament, tried to think of the least sexy things he could in the hopes that he’d blot out his increasingly desperate wish that somebody—anybody—jack him off.

Neither man did. Tseng finished first, panting hard as he pulled Reno’s face painfully close against him, his swollen erection jammed into his throat as far as it would go. He withdrew with a faint grunt, letting a few remaining dribbles of cum spill across the mixture of blood and tears already staining Reno’s face. Reno coughed, choking as he tried to swallow back a mouth full of semen. He breathed deep and heavy as he realized the extent to which his hips had begun to buck up to meet Rufus as he filled him. Moaning, he slumped his face forward in despairing surrender.

“You enjoying yourself, Reno?” Rufus asked coldly, taking a few long, intense thrusts as he spoke. “Do you appreciate your present position?”

Reno closed his eyes, whimpering a little in response. What the _ fuck _ was he supposed to say? Before he could think, Rufus yanked his hair back sharply, drawing a pained shout from him.

“I asked you a question, Turk,” he said with a calm insistence. “Tell me if you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Ye… yes, sir,” Reno said, assuming it was what Rufus wanted to hear. He groaned as Rufus fucked him all the harder for it, wondering when the bastard would finally get off.

“Tell me what you’d like me to do, then.”

“Fuck… I…” Reno bit his tongue. “Please…” Rufus paused a moment, his cock unmoving in Reno’s ass as he brought one hand around to lightly stroke him.

“Please, what?”

“Please fuck me, sir,” Reno gasped, trying awkwardly to angle his cock against Rufus’ hand. “Please…”

Rufus withdrew himself almost completely and slammed into him again, pulling his hand away from his cock to hold him steady as he bore down on him with a refreshed vigor. Reno, burning with shame and desperate for the release of orgasm, met his thrusts as best as he could, until Rufus finally leaned into him with a subdued groan.

Reno lay there--still, shaking, and painfully erect--as Rufus withdrew himself. A hot trickle of semen ran down his thigh as his muscles relaxed, and he looked upward to see that Tseng was still looking toward him, his expression flat and unreadable. Somewhere behind him, Rufus was presumably cleaning up and adjusting his clothing.

Reno didn’t know what he was supposed to say at this point. He didn’t know what he was supposed to expect. He gazed at Tseng pleadingly, but was met with no response or clue as to what was going to happen next.

“Well,” Rufus said, walking around the table with a satisfied sigh. “I’m glad you seem to have found this meeting enjoyable.”

He smiled awkwardly, reflexively trying to make light of his predicament. He knew how incredibly stupid he must look. Rufus leaned down, and grabbing his chin agai, tilted his face upward as he smiled back.

“We, unfortunately, have a less enjoyable meeting ahead of us, as we’re due to discuss the extent to which your fuck up can be mitigated and what exactly we ought do regarding your future in the company. Hopefully you won’t mind waiting for us.”

“No, sir,” Reno said, shaking his head weakly. “No, that’ll be fine.”

“I thought it would be.”

Tseng walked over and, grabbing his tethered wrists, pulled him upright.

“Sit down, Reno,” he said firmly, gesturing to the floor. They were the first words he’d spoken to him that day.

Reno did as he was told, shuddering as his softening erection grazed his thigh. Tseng took out another pair of zip-tie restraints and looped them through the ones he already wore, cuffing him to a leg of the table. He picked up the neat pile of Reno’s clothing atop which he placed the mag-rod, and then he silently followed Rufus out of the room.

Even once he heard the cold metallic click of the door shutting, Reno didn’t move. He suppressed the urge to sob, to throw himself about, to do whatever the fuck it is one did when you were sitting in a cell, ass leaking your boss’ cum onto the uncomfortably cold floor, wondering whether or not they were going to shoot you in an hour. If ever there was a time to show some goddamn professional stoicism, it was now. Regardless of what happened, he didn’t want them having footage of him breaking down. That was humiliating if they “retired” him. It was something he didn’t want floating around if they didn’t.

He tried to focus on how damn annoyed he was that they’d kept him tied up. It wasn’t like he had anywhere to fucking go in a high security interrogation room on a floor crawling with SOLDIERs. If nothing else, he could’ve had the relief of being able to jack off. He tensed a moment with that thought, considering how much his body had just betrayed him that he was thinking about rubbing one out in the wake of his superiors bending him over a table.

It was a moot point, though. He couldn’t reach his dick; he couldn’t clean himself up; he couldn’t do much of anything to make this even the slightest bit less terrible. All he could do was wait. He could wait and he could keep it together and he could have a long think about how it was that his life had gotten him to this point.

He wondered if it had really mattered that he’d apparently said something about the Sector 7 job—if Rufus might not have found an excuse to pull some stunt like this anyway. He wondered if they were making up the story with the blonde. He wondered if this might not be some sick piece of karma; if something like this would’ve happened had he refused to set that bomb; if the bomb and the plate and the blonde were all things he should stop thinking about because it was about to be fucking immaterial. His thoughts circled round and round the same stupid things he could neither alter nor control, and he desperately wished that these rooms had clocks, for all he very well knew the reasons they did not.

When the door clicked open again, it was honestly a relief, and he turned his head towards the door with another reflexive grin. The dried blood on his lip cracked as he did so.

“So how do I stand, guys?” he asked in as chipper a voice as he could muster.

Rufus entered the room and bent down to look at him, grinning back.

“The misunderstanding’s been cleared up,” he said succinctly. “We’re happy to have you continue on as a member of the company.”

Reno felt as though he was floating and was suddenly full of an intense giddiness that bordered on sickness. He was going to be fine. Whatever had just happened or whatever might still happen, he wasn’t going to die today.

“Wonderful news!” he said, cocking his head. “If you guys could just send me on my way…”

He looked to where Tseng stood grimly in the doorway, and his voice trailed off as he felt Rufus’ hand on his chest, fingers tracing a line down from his sternum until they brushed his now flaccid cock.

He closed his eyes and breathed deep. He could handle this.

“Given how much you enjoyed our earlier tête-à-tête, I was thinking we might go another round if that’s okay with you? Something by way of… a celebration?”

He swallowed hard, trying to decouple anything he felt from everything he was about to say and do.

“Sure thing, sir.”

“Excellent,” Rufus said in obvious high spirits. He gestured behind him. “As we discussed, Tseng.”

Reno watched as Tseng approached him, cut loose the second pair of cuffs, and pulled him up to standing. He tried not to react as the shifting of his body caused another trickle of semen to drip down his leg. He was going to be fine.

Tseng motioned for him to turn around. He did so, and felt the cold sensation of lube—a lot of it—being applied again. Rufus drew close to him and cupped his jaw in his hand, turning his head from side to side as though he were assessing a piece of livestock.

“It would be a shame for ShinRa to lose such an… obliging employee,” he said.

Thing seemed to move faster this time around—or else Reno’s perception of time had altered in the midst of however long he’d been on the floor. Tseng slid his fingers about inside of him and his lapsed arousal came back to him. He closed his eyes. He would just let things happen. He did not stifle his moans as Tseng hit his prostrate nor dull the sharpness of his breath when he eventually began to fuck him, plunging his lube-slicked cock into him without anything by way of warning or hesitation.

When next he opened his eyes, he tried to keep his gaze on Rufus. He flashed yet another awkward, ugly smile as his immediate superior pistoned into him with machine-like indifference. Rufus watched with a mix of obvious interest and detachment, not quite acknowledging his person even as he stared directly at him. After a while, he gestured significantly.

Tseng leaned back suddenly and Reno was suddenly off balance, giving a shout as Tseng hooked his arms under his knees and raised him aloft. _ FUCK. _ He was suddenly and newly aware of how deeply he could be filled as Tseng bounced him there on his cock, letting the greater weight of Reno’s body bear down along with him as he impaled him. _ Fuck fuck fuck. _ Reno moaned, yelped, made no pretense at maintaining his composure. He just barely resisted the urge to make some quip about how easily Tseng had pulled everything off—he didn’t want to be cuffed again for suggesting that he’d practiced this crap in front of a mirror.

It was only when Rufus finally approached him, cock out, and pressed himself close against his body, that Reno finally has an inkling as to what sort of pornstaresque bullshit had apparently been “discussed” before. After a few plunges, Tseng paused, and Reno’s eyes widened as Rufus slipped a singled lubed finger alongside the shaft already embedded in him. Reno tried to keep his breathing steady as he worked at him digit by digit, loosening him up still further until he finally worked the tip of his own cock inside.

Rufus laughed ever so slightly, slapping Reno gently on the hips before he also plunged abruptly into him.

He screamed. They let him remain still a moment, suspended there with two cocks jammed into his ass before they began to rut into him together. His head swam and his own erection throbbed with the impossible pressure of being so full. _ Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. _ Shaking, he turned his head to the florescent light above them and let it burn his vision to white. He could handle this. _ He was going to be fine. _

He drifted into that thought as he slackened every fiber of his body, trying to offer as little resistance as possible to letting them use him as they wanted. He burned in the midst of the pressure from within him and from the friction of their entangled bodies. His unwilling arousal seemed to hover forever on a knife’s edge, such that he wasn’t quite certain when it spilled over into orgasm. He was aware when it passed though, and he carried painfully on after that, his belly slick with his own seed.

Reno felt continually on the precipice of collapse as they kept fucking him, their steady rhythm growing faster as their breaths grew ragged. Eventually they spent themselves inside of him. Rufus groaned sharply as he came, nails biting into Reno’s shoulders. Tseng, as he had for much of the day, did his best to remain silent. When they were done, when he was finally lowered to the uncomfortably cold floor, Reno felt an unreality similar to that he’d felt when it had all begun.

Rufus—having gotten off, having gotten off of him, and having made a quick assessment of how thoroughly he’d ruined no doubt very expensive suit—smiled and ran a hand through his sweat slick hair.

“I’m so glad we could work this out.” He laughed slightly as he spoke. “I would have hated to have to let you go.”

Reno, mess that he was, tried to laugh back. He jerked his hand slightly against his restraints, reflexively wanting to make another awkward salute—something to communicate that all this wasn’t so big a deal. He wobbled a little, trying to pry himself up from where he lay, cum pooling beneath him. Eventually Tseng clipped off the zip tie.

He stood slowly, shaking—wishing the numbness would both leave and linger about his body. He knew he was going to be a mess tomorrow. Rufus looked him over, and Reno didn’t flinch when he reached to out to touch his face yet again. He seemed to have a real thing for touching faces.

“I hope you can work towards being more discreet.”

He leaned his cheek into Rufus’ palm, nodding with an awkward hesitance.

“You got it, sir.”

“Good,” Rufus said, caressing him slightly. “I look forward to us working together in the future.”

Reno understood the subtext clearly but made no comment to that effect. He kept nodding, kept smiling, kept trying his utmost to seem amenable to everything. He imagined what a comical fright he must look and tried not to react to the chill of the air against his wet skin.

Rufus let go of him and turned to leave. “I’ll let Tseng help you clean off.” 

Time seemed to skip about as he heard the clatter of steps echoing in the hall and felt the ragged burn of his own breath cutting through him. He had forgotten for a moment that Tseng was there. He turned to look at him and found him standing there with the same unimpeachable gravitas of a man who hadn’t just repeatedly raped his subordinate throughout the whole of the working day.

“What… what the hell, man?” Reno said after a moment, his voice finally cracking a little. “What the hell…”

Tseng didn’t move. For a moment, he didn’t react at all. Then he looked to the ground.

“Please don’t make this sort of mess of things in the future, Reno.” His voice was quiet.

Reno swallowed hard, not sure what to say or what he might ask. This was all pretty damn fucked. He stood there, noticing a small black gym bag for the first time that somebody had placed neatly alongside the wall. Tseng knelt to unzip it and produced a towel, which he threw over. Reno pressed it against his face first, and then with a shuddering laugh something like a sob, did his best to scour the rest of himself clean. When he looked up, he noticed his folded clothing was back on the table.

“I’ll return your mag-rod to you tomorrow,” he said soberly. “You should probably consider cashing in a day or two of your vacation time before we head south.”

Reno looked at him, and he thought to shout any number of hysterical, unprofessional, and incredibly stupid things before he heard himself indicate that that sounded like a good idea.

They looked at one another a moment, and Tseng turned to leave. Reno dressed as quickly as he could. The day fell away into a blur as he walked down sixty-seven flights of stairs, wondering with each stride how far it would be until he could no longer fall.

**Author's Note:**

> See my [profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathCorporal/profile) for notes on remixes, podfic, derivative works, and constructive criticism.
> 
> * * *
> 
> With thanks to karanguni for betaing.


End file.
